Capitol Notebook, Religious Rights Watch

After a little more than a year in Office, Barack Obama's public approval rating has hit its all time lowest point.

According to the latest Marist poll, only 44% of registered voters "approve" of the job Obama's doing, with 47% disapproving.  The poll also found Obama doing far worse with the all-important "independent" voters, wit only 29% approving and 57% disapproving.

The numbers from Rasmussen take it a step further.  They show 47% approval and 53% disapproval generally, but when you look at how strongly people feel about him one way or another, it gets pretty overwhelming.  It shows 27% "strongly approving", but 40% "strongly disapproving" - meaning Obama's upsidedown by 13 points when it comes to people who feel strongly and are more likely to be tuned in to what's going on.  (And more likely to vote...)

The same poll also shows 75% of voters describing themselves as "angry" about current federal government policies.  read more »

Despite numerous polls that clearly demonstrate that the American people don't want the type of health care "reform" that the Democrats have proposed, Obama has indicated (yet again) that he's undeterred and will push forward to try and get it passed.

As for that pesky public opinion, Obama continues to attribute it to a "lack of understanding" on the part of the public.  They just need to do a better job of communicating he says.  Of course, this is the President who has "communicated" with the American people more than any other President in history at this point in an administration, (with at least 29 high profile speeches dedicated to his health care plans).

At a New Hampshire town hall meeting (yet another in the record number of communication attempts), Obama stated:

“We just have to make sure that we move methodically and that the American
people understand what’s in the bill,” Obama said.

“What I will not do is to stop working on this issue because it is the right
thing to do for America,” Obama said. “You got to let your
members of Congress know they shouldn't give up.”  read more »

The Obama administration, which already was the most pro-abortion one in history, just got more pro-abortion this week.  And, incredibly, they are using their favorite government agency, the Department of Defense, to ram down their radical social policies upon the American people.  Previously, the Obama Democrats used a must-pass defense bill to attach a so-called "hate crimes" provision, which the majority of the American people overwhelmingly oppose.   

Yesterday, the Obama administration announced that the Defense Department will be making the morning-after pill Plan B  --  which many pro-lifers (who correctly believe that life begins at conception) call the "abortion pill  --  available at all military hospitals and health clinics around the world.   

Barack Obama has reversed many of the sensible, and life-giving, policies of the Bush administration since he was inaugurated this past year.  Indeed, on Obama's very first day in office, he signed an Executive Order abolishing President Ronald Reagan's "Mexico City Policy" prohibiting international groups  --  such as the abominable Planned Parenthood pro-abortion group founded by racist and eugenics supporter Margaret Sanger  --  which do abortions or promote abortions, from receiving any American taxpayers' dollars.  Both president Bush the elder and president Bush the younger maintained President Reagan's pro-life policies.     read more »

So, what kind of impact will Obama's budget "freeze" actually have on the budget?  Since, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, the following video says quite a bit...

Pass it on.

Since the State of the Union speech, (or really since the Scott Brown win in Massachusetts), Barack Obama has been working to polish his "fiscal accountability" credentials.

He told Congress that he wanted to institute a freeze on all "discretionary" domestic spending, which is another way of saying "everything except Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, defense, interest payments, stimulus spending, bailouts and anything we want to call an 'emergency'".  This means that the "freeze" is projected to apply to about $450 billion (or 13%) of a $3.5 trillion dollar budget.

This is essentially like putting a smiley face on a death certificate.  Or rather a "fiscal death certificate", considering his new budget projects the biggest deficit in American history and a national debt of about $20 trillion in the next decade.

So while we're continuing to "not" freeze spending on entitlement programs, what exactly are we cutting? According to USA Today:  read more »

The $2.5 million 30-second pro-life advertisement to be aired by CBS during this Sunday's Super Bowl, featuring Pam Tebow explaining why she rejected advice to have an abortion and carried her future Heisman Trophy winner son Tim to term, has generated far more publicity than its sponsors, Dr. James Dobson's "Focus on the Family," could have hoped for.   

The viciousness of the attacks by pro-abortion groups such as the National Organization for Women (NOW) and left-wing commentators has been astounding.  Many of these radical groups have been lobbying CBS to pull the advertisement.  For example, according to today's "The Washington Times," the Women's Media Center in a letter to CBS wrote:  "The content of this ad endangers women's health, uses sports to divide rather than to unite, and promotes an organization that opposes the equality of Americans based on gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, and reproductive freedom."    read more »

Political odds and ends...

US triple-A credit rating at risk?

You've got to wonder how long we can keep going down the fiscal road we're on and still maintain a AAA credit rating, which enables us to sell our bonds at higher rates of interest, and keep financing our big spending ways.  Turns out that thought has occurred to the people who hand out those ratings.

Moody's Investor Services, (the bond rating service), has said that the top debt ratings for the United States and the United Kingdom may "Test the AAA boundaries" due to the condition of their public finances.

Terrorists staying at Gitmo?

That's what the number two Democrat in the House of Representatives seems to be saying.  House Democrat Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said: “I think the administration realizes that this is a difficult issue,... And I think that they are assessing where they are and where they
think we ought to be, and I think that’s appropriate and I look forward
to discussing it with them.”

The brick wall the administration is running up against is that, no matter what they decide they want to do with Gitmo, Congress has to fund it.  And Republicans have introduced measures to deny funds to move the terrorists...and to deny funds for conducting trials of terrorists in US courts (as opposed to in military tribunals).  read more »

This story serves as a wonderful example of what conservatives have said about the Democrats favorite notions of how to "fix" health care in America.  That being to have the government just take the whole thing over in what is known as a "single payer system"...which means the government pays all the bills.

As conservatives have pointed out, when the government pays all the bills, it eventually moves to control the costs by rationing care.  And, with the profit motive gone, advances in medicine and the overall quality of care soon suffer.

During the course of the debate, both sides have held out countries such as Canada and England as representing what was "right" or "wrong" with this approach.

Well now comes this story from CBC News:

Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams is set to undergo heart surgery this week in the United States.

CBC News confirmed Monday that Williams, 60, left the province earlier in the day and will have surgery later in the week.

The premier's office provided few details, beyond confirming that he
would have heart surgery and saying that it was not necessarily a
routine procedure. ...  read more »

One of the byproducts of the intense debate over ObamaCare and the proposed entre' to a government takeover of about 1/6th of our economy is a renewed interest on the part of state legislators in the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution.  The amendment states:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor
prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States
respectively, or to the people.

In other words, the scope and power of the federal government is (supposed to be) limited, therefore it can't be construed to extend to allowing Washington DC to mandate that private citizens purchase a specific consumer product.  In this case, a health insurance policy.  (via the AP)

Although President Barack Obama's push for a health care overhaul has stalled, conservative lawmakers in more than two-thirds of the states are forging ahead with constitutional amendments to ban government health insurance mandates.  read more »

The polls are in on the publics response to Obama's first State of the Union speech, and the numbers pretty much speak for themselves.

According to the latest Gallup poll, Obama's job approval is still under the half-way mark, at 48%.  Via LifeNews:

In the three days following the speech, Gallup shows Obama with a 48
percent approval and 46 percent disapproval rating -- unchanged from
before the address.

Philip Klein, a writer at the conservative magazine American Spectator gives
his insight on the poll.

"Going into President Obama's first State of the Union speech,
Gallup noted that annual speeches to Congress rarely affect presidential
approval ratings (in large part because the audience tends to be skewed
toward those who already support him). It turns out that despite his
oratorical skills, our current president is not different in this
respect from his predecessors," he writes. ...
 read more »